Series offers eclectic mix of lectures, seminars, workshops and activities
Todd Ternovan would eventually retire a veteran OPP detective-constable, but his start in the work world was as a teenage jail guard among gangsters, accused killers, rapists and petty thieves.
There was the time two bikers, convicted in a grisly triple murder in Windsor, were transferred from a federal penitentiary back to Windsor Jail pending a court appeal. Ordered into segregation at one point, they expressed their reluctance by getting into a brawl with corrections officers.
During the ensuing melee, one of the bikers, who had lost a leg in a motorcycle accident, lost his prosthetic limb, which was then used as a club by one of the guards.
“This was a kinda cool job,” said Ternovan.
Shuttered in 2014, Windsor Jail was “pretty archaic, it was dark, dingy — nothing but concrete and steel bars,” he said of his first workplace.
Ternovan signed up for the well-paying job as an 18-year-old after high school in 1979 in order to earn money for university to study — early childhood education.
“I'm a teen ... I know nothing about crime,” he told the Windsor Star. After a year — during which inmates referred to him as `boss' — he went to university in Toronto, but away from the classroom he worked part-time at that city's far more notorious Don Jail. What followed was a long career in policing.
With writer Matthew St. Anand, Ternovan recently wrote a book about his four decades in uniform (and also out of uniform, including in undercover work). Gas of Tank: A Canadian Law Enforcement Odyssey 1979-2019 will be the subject of an Eldercollege presentation on May 1.
Canterbury Eldercollege launched its spring program last week with another eclectic offering of lectures, seminars, workshops and hands-on activities. More than 60 courses led by volunteers are being presented until June 12.
Eldercollege bills itself as a notfor-profit organization dedicated to the principle of lifelong learning. Courses offered are described as useful, sociable and entertaining for persons 55 and older. Affordable fees and no homework, no exams, no pressure. Courses are online, in-person or hybrid.
“It's been a lot of fun — you get to do a lot of thinking,” said founding director Lloyd Brown-john. The idea to start Eldercollege came to the retired university professor back in the 1960s when a clergy friend pointed to others leaving behind notable careers: “Too bad nobody knows how to harness all that talent and knowledge.”
Brown-john, who turns 84 next month, said there's also a powerful social aspect to the two-hour courses, which have breaks for students to chat and share.
Learning is sometimes doing, and there's plenty of that too, with workshops on everything from `Creating Your Own Personalized Herb Mixtures and Spicy Blends' (with instructor Alice Silcox) to `Attract and Raise Monarch Butterflies in Your Garden' (Leo Silvestri).
There's local, national and global history and travel and even stuff that's out of this world, including Gordon Drake's `Asteroid Dust and its Significance for the Origin of Life.'
Brown-john makes special note of one of this spring 's courses, `Canada's Black Heritage: Mary Ann Shadd Cary A Remarkable Person' on June 3. “All four women doing it are relatives of Shadd Cary,” he said.
A special event being offered by Eldercollege this spring that is open to everyone and without the basic $25 membership requirement is A Mosquito and an Amazing Adventure.
The panel and presentation on June 6 comes on the 25th anniversary of a group of local adventurers setting off for the Canadian Arctic to recover whatever they could from the isolated crash site of a Second World War-era Mosquito fighter/bomber converted to peacetime map-making efforts.
The adventurers and the Windsor Star reporter who accompanied them will be on the stage at Windsor's Canadian Aviation Museum, 104-2600 Airport Rd.
To find out more about Canterbury Eldercollege and view its latest offerings and register for courses, go to uwindsor/ca/canterbury/429/out-old-and-new.